Invisibility Check
by Tori Angeli
Summary: Donatello is fairly sure something's up. Fairly sure. Not entirely sure. Pretty sure. Something is probably up. In the meantime, he angsts.


Author's Notes: This was written as a Christmas gift to Winnychan. Yes, it took me long enough to put it up. Yes, it's pure crack. Non-graphic self-mutilation warning.

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_Sometimes I wonder_

_Sometimes I wonder_

_If I'll ever feel real again_

_Because all I know now_

_Is this pain_

_This horrible pain_

_I hate myself_

_I want to die_

_I wish it had never happened_

_To me_

_I wish I had never been born if I was born to do this_

_Please, someone_

_Help me._

Don sighed, put down the pencil, buried his face in his pillow, and sobbed. He wasn't sure if he was sobbing about his current state of mind or the quality of the poetry he had just written, but either way, sobbing seemed like the appropriate course of action. A life had been snuffed out, and he had been responsible. If that wasn't worth sobbing over, what was?

He had given the spider he'd stepped on a proper funeral and burial. His brothers had laughed at him for his sentimentality, but he knew they could never understand the value he placed on life. They couldn't understand that it was a spider—a spider!—and would have no one to mourn for it besides Hamato Donatello, its murderer. It was too tragic, too painful.

The razor gleamed like calm waters as he removed it from his hiding place in his drawer. His brothers couldn't understand his pain. They didn't even noticed he had changed. His father was a nonentity. This was the only thing that helped.

He had cut one wrist before realizing that his bedroom was NOT the place to do this. Now he was standing with a bloody wrist in the middle of his bedroom with no place to clean this thing. The only thing to do was to leave and try to slip into the bathroom without anyone noticing. This would require careful implementation of his ninja skills. He would have to be cautious.

No one looked at him when he slipped out the door. A quick glance about the family room below revealed Mikey finger-painting on the floor, bent over on his knees. Paint was smeared all over the floor, his face, his arms, and everywhere else except the paper. However, Mikey seemed happy, giggling and clapping his hands together in delight at the mess.

The last thing Don wanted was to reveal the cruel truth of the adult world to his youngest brother. He spent a lot of concentration trying to be as quiet as possible while creeping down the stairs. If Master Splinter had been around to see him instead of huddling in his room in constant meditation, he would have been in awe of his intelligent son's display of perfect stealth and technique. However, the laudable effort was rendered pointless when Leo and Raph burst out of Raph's room and blazed right past Don on the stairs.

"You are being unreasonable," Leo was crying, tears standing in his eyes. The leader of the turtles must have been on the verge of a breakdown. Again. "I can't believe you would even—why do you have to say things like that to me? You know how hard I work to keep this family together!"

"Yeah, well, it ain't good enough," snarled Raph, casually pushing at Leo. "The family's falling apart and it's all your fault. Some leader."

"Raph," Leo said shakily, "you don't mean that. Tell me you don't mean that."

Raph snorted. "If I didn't mean it, I wouldn't say it."

Seeing as how neither Leo nor Raph had noticed their bleeding brother on the stairs, Don started sneaking down again. They would be like this for hours. Lately, it was either Raph persecuting Leo or Leo emotionally abusing Raph. It had been stressful at first, but after the first few minutes, Mikey had gone back to playing with his tinker toys and Don had gone back to his lab. Now Don used the clamor to his advantage.

Unfortunately, Klunk the Cat was perched on the bottom step, having selected that for his sleeping area shortly after Raph and Leo had stormed down the stairs. The cat's tail was lucklessly and painfully stepped on by Don. At Klunk's subsequent yowl, Don suddenly crumpled to the floor, hugging himself and trembling.

Spider. Foot. Bug guts.

He came to himself on the cold concrete floor. He was still bleeding. The only being that had noticed his presence was a very indignant Klunk the Cat, who was sitting a ways away, washing his tail and pointedly ignoring Don as though the turtle had lost Cat Points with him. Donatello glanced up at his brothers to make sure they hadn't noticed. Leo and Raph were still yelling at each other. Mikey was still finger-painting. No one had seen that.

_Really?_

Don frowned and pushed himself to his feet. After careful consideration, he lifted one foot and balanced on the other. No one noticed. Then, he started jumping up and down on one foot. Nothing.

"I'll be going to my gender reassignment surgery now," he said casually, taking a step toward the door. A quick glance back at his brothers revealed no change in the scene. After further thought, he gave a little twirl and sang, "Ohhhhhh who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"

Mikey didn't even join in to answer the question. Don frowned and stared at each of his brothers in turn. This was interesting. Perhaps a quick invisibility check was in order. He headed to the bathroom. And headed back out after the mirror proved that he was not, in fact, even transparent. Unless he was under the influence of some alien technology that made it so he was the only one who could see…um, him. That was a thought.

Well, in the meantime, perhaps this would be a good time to put his suicide plan into action. He didn't deserve to live after killing the spider, after all. His brothers didn't understand. He was invisible. This seemed like as good a time as any.

His eyes scanned his family. Mikey had finally noticed that Raph and Leo were arguing and was crying as pitifully as he could manage. Leo was now kneeling on the floor, sobbing and clutching his head while Raph smirked over him. It didn't seem like things had always been this way. Perhaps it was a curse. Perhaps it was a conspiracy.

Perhaps it had to do with that T-shirt Leo had brought back from Costa Rica that hung in a frame in his room and said, in large green capital letters and a breezy tropical font, "THIS T-SHIRT WILL MAKE EVERYONE IN THE VICINITY ACT OUT OF CHARACTER."

But that seemed too obvious.


End file.
